and more recently jeff greens dad on curb
- bill 10-12-2005 9:02 pm [add a comment]

...steve allen, beverly hillbillys, carson, loveboat... dont get me started about louis nye. nyt obit


- bill 10-12-2005 9:04 pm [add a comment]

THE WHEELER DEALERS (1963). My aesthetic preferences oblige me to follow certain dictums. One is that any excuse to watch Louie Nye in a movie or TV show is valid. Nye’s Steve Allen Show shtik as Mad Ave. swinger Gordon Hathaway was only the beginning of a career that found him consistently in deep with out-there characters (see his “Haywire Hall of Fame” entry [“Teenage Beatnik”] in our Sounds chapter). Here, in a satire about James Garner and his Texas-tea pals doing an early Enron, Nye is Stanislas, a buck-chasing Abstract Expressionist who pours paint onto the tires of his trike, then rides it over his canvas to make masterpieces (“Look, man,” he tells a vising critic, “if you’re gonna walk on my canvas, the least you could do is put a little crimson on your sole!”).

As usual, Lou’s too too much, van-dyke-bearded, bopping around in snap-button Western shirts and Tyrolean hat (with feather). When Garner attends one of his shows, Nye identifies a guy standing before one of his paintings and sobbing uncontrollably as “a paid weeper” who fakes emotional overload to influence potential buyers.

Wheeler Dealer has other charms, as well. Allen Show alums Joey Forman and Pat Harrington Jr. sizzle as New York flacks Garner hires to hype his widget investment; in a courtroom scene, juicy John Astin flies over the moon as a federal prosecutor trying to catch Garner; and Chill Wills, Phil Harris and Charles Watts play Midland fat-cats Ray Jay, Jay Ray and J.R. (two decades before Dallas’ Hagman). Garner’s TX accent comes and goes, and his square visage resembles a more humane Hank Rollins. -G.S.

that's a funny obit. i barely remember sonny drysdale.
- tom moody 10-12-2005 9:18 pm [add a comment]